This book is divided into six sections. The first four sections begin with an apologia for the translation commentary exercise followed by brief introductions to the aims, format and theoretical foundations of the art. The bulk of the text consists of six worked examples, i.e. in the first five instances we find both a published and a Birkbeck ‘in-house’ version, which are then compared by a ‘guinea-pig’ group of six students. The sixth and final worked example is not only the subject of several commentaries but also the work of the author comparing two in-house translations of an editorial from Le Chasseur français published in 1996.